It was bound to happen. My grandfather’s health was deteriorating already, mostly due to his constant smoking during most of his life.

Still, it came as a shock when my mom stumbled up the stairs, crying and saying that she had just received a phone call from the hospital/senior center my grandfather was at. His heart had failed during the night.

I didn’t really know my grandfather. He lived in Taiwan the later part of his life; my parents had immigrated to the US, so much of my extended family was still in Taiwan. I had met my grandfather a few times when we visited him or vice versa; on one of his visits to the US, he beat my siblings and I in a soccer game single-handedly.

His soccer skills were amazing. My mom said that during his prime, he had been considered for the National team in China. But during that time World War II started, and my grandfather turned down the offer to become a soldier.

That’s another thing I know my grandfather for. He was a war veteran. He never talked about his experiences in the war (but then again, you can’t really talk about these things, can you?). He must have had very traumatizing experiences in that war and the war after that (the Kuomintang-Communist War), because after the war he fell into habits of smoking, drinking, and gambling. His life went downhill from there.

My grandfather grew up in the midst of war. There was one incident that occurred during my father’s mid-teens. My grandfather’s father was sick and Japan was attempting to invade China. My grandfather had to take his younger siblings with him (he was the oldest) and abandon his dying father in hopes that he and his siblings could escape. From what my mom tells me, one of his siblings was captured by the Japanese. He never heard from him again.

My grandfather’s gambling habits kept my mom in poverty during her early life. He was almost never home at night; playing mahjong and other gambling games and throwing away his money. My grandmother was forced to take a job of her own, and even that couldn’t hold up the slack; some of the debts on my mom’s family still haven’t been paid back today.

My grandmother. She was stubborn, and strong-willed; there were many arguments between grandpa and her. My mom remembers them all too well.

My grandmother landed in the hospital shortly before my grandfather did; a blood vessel near her brain burst out of stress. That happened about 5 years ago. My grandmother got amnesia, and her health’s been in steady decline since.

For all their fights, my grandfather still cared about her, staying with her long hours in the hospital, and when they moved her, the senior center. He became a permanent resident there several months later; his addiction to smoking had finally caught up to him.

We visited them the winter of 2005; that was the last time I saw him. He looked fine, better than my grandma at least; I was more worried about her life than his.

A year after we came back, surgery was performed on my grandfather. They gouged out a hole in his throat and inserted a pipe into it for respiration. He couldn’t talk after that. I remember thinking how regrettable it was that I could never ask about his war experiences. Now he’s dead. Same difference, if I think about it that way. But I try not to.

He died two days ago; the senior center he was in dumped his body in a mortuary. He doesn’t even have the money for a proper funeral ceremony. My mom doesn’t know what to do. She’s going over there in two days.

My grandfather was a failure at most of his things in life. He smoked, drank, gambled…was never around to take care of his children. He was the cause of money problems for my mom’s family, the reason why my grandmother had to struggle so. Still, he’s my grandfather.